Today’s Morning Bell from Heritage opines spotly on (spot-on-ly? On spotly? Whatever! :-)) regarding Obama’s foreign policy ala Middle East, aptly titling the piece Middle east Crumbles Around Obama’s Foreign Policy.

Thousands are dead in Syria, with more blood spilled each day. Iran is within arm’s reach of a nuclear weapon, threatening Israel’s very existence. And in Egypt, 19 Americans are banned from leaving the country, making them veritable hostages in an unfriendly land [1]. All indications are that the Middle East is crumbling, and President Barack Obama’s foreign policy is collapsing right along with it.

First look toward Homs, Syria — ground zero in the 11-month-old uprising against the brutal government of Bashar al-Assad, which is unleashing death upon its people minute by minute and hour by hour. The United Nations estimates that Assad’s regime has killed more than 5,000 anti-government protesters in the last 11 months, with 200 killed [2] on Friday night alone. The Arab League has stationed observers in country, whose mission was to oversee compliance with a peace plan. That failed.

The Obama Administration rushed to the United Nations Security Council and attempted to pass a resolution calling for Assad to step aside. Predictably, China and Russia laid down a veto. On Monday, the United States finally closed the doors to its embassy [3] in Damascus and withdrew the diplomatic staff over continuing security concerns. Meanwhile, intelligence experts are examining the risk of terrorists [4]gaining control of Syria’s weapons stockpiles should the Assad regime fall.

To the east in Iran, the regime’s full-steam-ahead pursuit of nuclear weapons is reaching a crescendo, with Defense Secretary Leon Panetta recently remarking [5] that the country could build a bomb within one year and have the means for delivering it one or two years later.

Finally, in Egypt, officials there published a list [6] of 43 people, including 19 Americans, accused of interfering in Egypt’s internal politics. They are not allowed to leave the country and could soon be brought to trial on claims that they illegally funded political groups in Egypt’s parliamentary elections. Heritage’s James Phillips explains [1] that “they have become hostages in a much larger struggle: the struggle for freedom in Egypt against an unholy alliance between Egypt’s transitional military government and the Islamist political parties who will soon assume power.”

President Obama and members of his Cabinet tried to reach Egyptian leaders on the matter [7], but in the words of Lorne Craner, head of the pro-democracy organization IRI, “things are getting worse . . . We are all scratching our heads over here. I did two tours at State and one at the [National Security Council]. If the president called someone, something gets worked out.” But as was the case under President Jimmy Carter, the White House appears helpless while Americans are held captive.

None of these crises occurs in a vacuum — except for the vacuum of a cogent U.S. strategy for dealing with these ever-worsening conditions. Since President Obama took office, he has pursued a diplomatic strategy of charm and restraint: attempting to broker peace between Israel and Palestine, engaging with Syria and Iran, and withdrawing from Iraq. Now we are seeing the results.

One gets the impression that our extremely left leaning, “all politics, all the time” president has completely lost control, like any non manager with no experience to that end who has been promoted to a multi-faceted managerial post: He may hold on for awhile, but eventually the job runs away from him and he finds himself way out of his depth.

Now we have all hell breaking loose all over the Middle East with half these so-called “Arab Spring” states almost surely on their ways into a very HOT Extremist Summer as the fanatics take over. Give it a couple more years for those people to get situated over there, then perhaps the liberals that spawned Obama will come to the realization that the whole “democracy” concept is a farce, that those taking over those countries will largely be anti-U.S. and well disposed toward doing some unpleasant things about it.

But I suppose I’m straying a bit.

Read the entire Heritage Foundation article.